How Instagram Stories works: How to use Instagram like Snapchat

Instagram has copied the Snapchat Story. Now its easy for Snapchat users to adapt Instagram Stories. But for new users, here is a quick review: For a quick guide to how Instagram Stories works, check out our animated instruction manual

It’s easiest to think of Instagram Stories in terms of what’s the same and what’s different from Snapchat Stories.

Instagram Stories – The similarities with Snapchat

The Stories format laces the last 24-hours of 10-second-max photos and videos you’ve shared into a slideshow you can tap to fast-forward through

Everything you post disappears after 1 day

You shoot full-screen in the app or upload things from the last 24 hours of your camera roll (recently added to Snapchat with Memories)

You adorn your photos with drawings, text, and emoji, and swipeable color filters

You can save your individual Story slides before or after posting them

Your followers voluntarily tap in to pull your Story and view it, instead of it being pushed into a single feed

People can swipe up to reply to your Stories, which are delivered through Instagram Direct private messages

You can see who’s viewed your Story

Instagram Stories – Differences with Snapchat

Instagram Stories appear in a row at the top of the main feed instead of on a separate screen like Snapchat and are sorted by who you interact with most, not purely reverse chronological like Snapchat

Anyone you allow to follow you on Instagram can see your Instagram Stories though you can also block people, opposed to building a separate network on Snapchat

You don’t have to be following someone to view their Instagram Stories, which can be viewed from their prolfile as long as they’re public

You can swipe right or tap the Stories icon in the top left to open the Stories camera, opposed to Snapchat defaulting to the camera

You can hold the screen to pause a slideshow, or tap the left side to go back a slide, oppose to Snapchat’s time-limited, constantly progressing Stories

You can’t add old content to Instagram Stories unless you reimport or screenshot, while Snapchat lets you share old Memories with a white border and timestamp around them

Instagram offers custom color control for drawing with an easy picker as well as pre-made palettes like earth-tones or greyscale, while Snapchat custom color control is much more clumsy

Instagram currently lacks location filters, native selfie lens filters, stickers, 3D stickers, and speed effects but you can save content from third-party apps like Facebook-owned MSQRD and then share them

You can’t see who screenshotted your Instagram Story, while Snapchat warns you

You can’t save your whole day’s Story like on Snapchat, but you can post slides from your Story to the permanent Instagram feed / Read more at: https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/02/instagram-stories/

How to use Instagram Stories

To create your own story, take a photo or video and add filters by swiping left and right. The relevant text, drawing and emoji options are shown in the top left-hand corner.

Press the “tick” icon to automatically add the post to a Story in chronological order.

These posts can also be removed, and for the first time Instagram lets you select your audience. Previously, it was an “all-or-nothing” approach, but Stories lets you handpick who you share posts with, and importantly who you choose not to.

Instagram Stories is being rolled out from today. It is likely to appear in the UK overnight and into the early hours of Wednesday and users need to update their app to see the new features.

The news comes as Instagram builds on its video options by launching a dedicated video channel called “Videos You Might Like.”

This channel collects videos from across Instagram’s members’ feeds and packages them into what it calls “a seamless viewing experience”. The idea behind this is to allow more posting on Instagram from users.

“We wanted to give you a sense of comfort; so the idea is that you’re posting as the day goes along,” Weil says.

“You’re posting the moments that happen, you don’t need to put as much thought into them as you do with a normal Instagram post because you know it is temporary – you have full control over your audience.”

Credit Instagram

As you scroll through the Explore grid over the coming months, Instagram will also be adding “Featured” channels with videos on specific topics such as the 2016 Olympics, Cannes Film Festival, Coachella, Halloween or New Year’s Eve.

Over the past six months, the total time people spent watching video on Instagram increased 150 per cent, according to theFacebook-owned firm, and this latest tool is designed to help you find the best content. / Read more at: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/instagram-stories-new-how-to-use-snapchat

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